Readers talk about nurses strike

The registered nursing strike at Northern Michigan Hospital has gotten national attention for its duration and intensity, but locally its fame is not appreciated as a simple news item.

In Northern Michigan, lives have been forever changed and a community has been divided. No matter which party area residents support, no one liked to see their friends and neighbors standing in temperatures that fell to 30 degrees below zero, in rainstorms and snowstorms, walking the line. No one liked the idea of out-of-town nurses coming into the hospital at top rates, taking their wages out of the community when their shifts were over. And no one liked the idea of pickets set up at hospital board members' homes, in front of lawns where children play.

But it's a reality we've come to live with, and after eight months of the strike everyone's formed an opinion of some kind. Many, like News-Review reader panelist Connie Sherk of Charlevoix, are ready for the nurses to return to work.

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"I believe that anyone who is a doctor or nurse, fireman, policeman or traffic controller, you should not go out on strike," Sherk said. "You don't go into that profession to make money - you go into it because you want to help people, and you don't stop helping people for any reason."

The Reader Panel is a group of 15 area residents who have agreed to comment on issues throughout the year.

Sherk, who worked at NMH 30 years ago in the kitchen and in admitting, said she accepts that big corporations have to make cuts every now and then.

"Every business cuts to make money," she said. "You've got to just buck up and go with it. If it were me, and I was unhappy, my feet would do the walking. I wouldn't be walking out front saying 'Give me this or give me that.' I would go somewhere where they did it already."

Sherk, a documentation coordinator at Honeywell, said she blames the striking nurses for the duration of the strike.

"They burned all their bridges immediately," she said. "So the hospital said 'Fine, we don't need you after all.'"

But Walloon Lake resident Joe Breidenstein disagreed. The real estate and tourism promoter said he thinks of the majority of nurses who voted in favor of the union in October 2001.

"The nurses evidently thought that it was necessary to do this," he said. "A majority of nurses would never have voted for a union if everything was just rosy and fine. And it certainly wouldn't have lasted this long if it was rosy and peachy, either."

He doesn't like the behavior of any party involved in the strike, no matter how strong feelings may get.

"I have heard of some incidents where a striking nurse has blown up in public at a nurse who was not out on strike supporting them," Breidenstein said. "I hate personal attacks; I don't think we should be getting down into gutter trench warfare."

He takes issue with the hospital administration and board for not giving nurses the respect he thinks they deserve.

"They've got to get back to some mutual respect," he said. "The board needs to say that they don't have a well-oiled machine anymore. The good ol' boy network wasn't working as well as they thought it was."

The dispute, Breidenstein said, is akin to a divorce.

"It's almost like you have to put a collar around everybody's necks and lead them to the table and make them start talking. It's like a bad marriage that's doomed, and divorce is the only answer. Is that what the hospital wants? A divorce?"

Susan McCloskey is a registered nurse who worked at Northern Michigan Hospital before she left to have twin boys. When it came time for her to return this past spring, she resigned from her post.

"It wasn't because of the strike," she said. "I wasn't ready to go back. But I will say that I won't go back as long as there's a union in there."

McCloskey said the strike has put everyone in a bad position.

"It's been very divisive," she said. "I see my friends at the grocery store and I want to support them. At the same time, I never want to work for a union. A union has come in here and divided the community, and that's not right."

McCloskey said she wants to support nursing in general, and thinks many community members do, too.

"I want to support all those who are doing what they think is right being on the line and picketing," she said. "And I want to support all those who are doing what they think is right and working.

"And that's a big problem here," she said. "Nurses always back up other nurses. It's so important, when there are no doctors around, that nurses are really, really used to backing each other up. That's what makes this so hard; now you have nurses against nurses and that's not the way we are."

She said she doesn't like to think of what it would be like to work together once the strike is over.

"I don't know what they're going to do," she said. "It's not going to be pretty."

McCloskey said both parties - the Teamsters and the NMH administration - have a right to their strategies, but that neither one is ideal.